Transformation

 In my neighborhood, there is a medium-size house built in the Victorian style, complete with turret.  The house was painted a dull grey, and the yard was overgrown for years behind a small white fence that did more to shut out than to welcome visitors.  Everything about the house said "Neglect," and it was even rumored that the house was haunted.  

Recently, a young couple purchased the house and began renovations, despite having heard the rumors of ghosts.  They repainted the exterior a softer shade of grey, removed the overgrown debris in the yard, and began installing a garden that included benches and fountains, making the home once again inviting and welcoming.  Although I have not seen the inside of the home, I can imagine that every corner and closet has been gone through with improvements.

I was thinking about that house this morning as I read the meditation from Richard Rohr:

Contemplative prayer allows us to build our own house. To pray is to discover that Someone else is within our house and to recognize that it is not our house at all. To keeping praying is to have no house to protect because there is only One House. And that One House is Everybody’s Home. In other words, those who pray from the heart actually live in a very different world. I like to say it’s a Christ-soaked world, a world where matter is inspirited and spirit is embodied. In this world, everything is sacred; and the word “Real” takes on a new meaning. 

It appears that God loves life—the creating never stops.

We will love and create and maintain life.

It appears that God is love—an enduring, patient kind.

We will seek and trust love in all its humanizing (and therefore divinizing forms.

It appears that God loves the variety of multiple features, faces, and forms.

We will not be afraid of the other, the not-me, the stranger at the gate.

It appears that God loves—is—beauty: Look at this world!

Those who pray already know this. Their passion will be for beauty.

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Once we allow Jesus to enter our house and to begin His renovation, He will eventually open all the doors and closets, move around or discard the furniture, and clean up the exterior so that people are no longer afraid to enter, and the ghosts will be dispersed.  We will discover that our house is a house for others, because it is no longer "our" house, but now God's house --- and He will welcome those He chooses.  His passion is for beauty and for life, whereas we may have become accustomed to dinginess and decay.  

Revelation 3:20 says, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock.  If anyone will open to Me, I will come in and sup with him, and he with Me."  If we invite Him in, and give Him room to move in us, we may be surprised at the renovations that begin to happen!